Podcasts about resting

Already feeling the heat and pressure of our school schedule kicking into full gear, we need to re-shift our focus on what it means to "find rest unto your souls".

Andrea Samadi shares her personal resting heart rate data to show why measuring over time matters more than fixating on a single score. She explains how trends reveal stress, recovery, and adaptation, and why comparing yourself to your own baseline is the most useful approach. Learn practical steps to measure consistently, contextualize changes, experiment with one behavior, and use your physiological data to make intentional improvements in sleep, recovery, and performance. BONUS EPISODE 3: ON THIS EPISODE, WE'LL COVER ✔ What resting heart rate can reveal about stress, recovery, and adaptation over time ✔ The story hidden in my own data — from a high of 57 bpm in February to 53 bpm in August ✔ Why the six-month trend matters — and what my 2% lower average may be telling me ✔ How stress and training load can show up in your physiology before you consciously recognize it ✔ Why recovery and nervous-system regulation matter for building a more resilient baseline ✔ How to find your own RHR baseline instead of comparing yourself with someone else ✔ How to look for deviations and patterns across weeks and months—not individual days ✔ How to connect RHR with sleep, HRV, recovery, training, stress, and life events ✔ How to run your own personal experiment: change one variable, measure, and see what happens ✔ The bigger lesson: What gets measured over time can reveal a story you couldn't see day to day. Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we bridge neuroscience, social and emotional learning, and human performance so we can create measurable improvements in our well-being, achievement, leadership, productivity, and results. I'm Andrea Samadi, and if you've been following along through Season 16, you'll know that we've been building what I call The Brain's Operating System for Human Performance—a neuroscience-based framework designed to help us understand how the different systems of the brain and body work together to influence how we learn, adapt, connect, lead, and ultimately how we perform. We are currently in Phase 3 where we are covering Movement, Learning and Cognition. If you just finished Episode 405[i] with Dr. Kristen Holmes, you know we've been looking at recovery as an essential part of our Movement Loop. Movement → Brain Activation → Attention → Learning → Recovery → Adaptation → Performance → Greater Capacity. And Kristen's work has reinforced something I've learned after years of tracking my own physiology: What gets measured gets improved. But this week, I wanted to dive into my own personal data to show us something I think is easy to miss: Sometimes what gets measured over time reveals a story you simply couldn't see day to day. When we're looking at a wearable every morning, it's easy to become focused on today's number. Today's recovery score. Today's HRV. Today's resting heart rate. Was it higher? Was it lower? But one number—or even one week—rarely tells us very much about the direction we're actually moving. It's when we begin to zoom out that patterns emerge. And that's exactly what happened when I looked more closely at my resting heart rate this year. What initially looked like a collection of numbers began to tell a much bigger story about stress, recovery, consistency, and adaptation. So my hope for this episode isn't that you compare your resting heart rate to mine. Your numbers will be different. My hope is that this episode encourages you to become curious about your own data. Maybe you track sleep. Maybe it's HRV. Resting heart rate. Recovery. Exercise. Blood pressure. Steps. Or even something as simple as your energy, mood, or ability to focus. Take one metric and zoom out. Look at three months. Six months. Maybe even a year. And instead of asking, “Is today's number good or bad?” Ask a different question: “What is the trend that I'm seeing here, trying to tell me?” Is something improving? Is something slowly moving in the wrong direction? Does your physiology change during periods of higher stress? (like you will see mine did). Can you see what happens when you sleep more consistently, exercise differently, recover better, or change one habit? Because sometimes the most valuable insight isn't found in today's score. It's hidden in the pattern. And once you can see the pattern, you have information you can actually use. That's really the purpose of sharing my personal data with you today. Not to say, “Here's what worked for me, so you should do exactly the same thing.” But to show you what can happen when we become students of our own physiology. We measure. Find the tool that works best for you. We notice. Patterns…ups and downs. We experiment. We become intentional with our behaviors to change/improve the numbers. We adjust and try something new/different. And then we measure again. Because ultimately, what gets measured gets improved—but what gets measured over time can reveal the story that you tell you more than just a bunch of numbers. And sometimes that story shows us exactly where our next opportunity for change might be. And that's exactly what happened with my resting heart rate. Earlier this year, I watched my monthly average climb to 56...and then 57 beats per minute. You can see my data in the show notes. Sept and October were even, at 54, and then something happened in November that took my RHR up, and it kept climbing.  I know what was happening in those months to cause the increase. And I went all out to protect my recovery. I worked on rest, hydration, extra exercise, and recovery sessions. Then it began coming down. in March 54 in April 53 The 56 in May isn't the most accurate representation of what was happening with my data, as we travelled internationally and there were 5 days my whoop didn't calculate my score correctly (something to do with the change in time zones) so I'm not going to say that I was stressed out during a relaxing vacation. But something happened that caught my attention. You can see it with the graphics in the show notes. My newest six-month WHOOP average dropped from 55 to 54 beats per minute—2% lower than the previous six months. This NEW result was highlighted in GREEN for me to notice the improvement. For the first time in this story, the baseline itself had moved. And that's what we're going to dive into today. Because this episode isn't really about whether 53 is a good resting heart rate. It's about something much more useful: Do you know your baseline with YOUR RHR—and do you know which direction it's moving? Even better, if you can forsee that it will be moving up, like I knew it was going to in January/February, do you have strategies in place to buffer the stress, and keep this number as close as you can to your baseline? Let's dive into this bonus episode. The Story Behind My Resting Heart Rate: Do You Know Yours? There's a number I've been watching for the past year. I watched it raise higher (when I'm stressed) and go lower when I'm doing all the right things to rest and recover. When I zoom out and look at this number over the past year, it tells a fascinating story about my fitness, recovery, stress, and the way my body is adapting. That number is my resting heart rate. And today I want to ask you: Do you know yours? Because one of the biggest lessons I've learned from nearly five years of tracking my physiology is something we've talked about throughout this podcast: What gets measured gets improved. But I think I need to add something to that. What gets measured over time reveals the story. And my newest data makes that clearer than ever. PART 1 — WHAT IS RESTING HEART RATE? Resting heart rate, or RHR, is simply the number of times your heart beats per minute while your body is at rest. Normal Ranges and Fitness[ii] Average adults: 60 to 100 bpm. Active adults: 55 to 85 bpm. Athletes: 40 to 60 bpm, because their heart muscle is strong and pumps blood with ease For adults, resting heart rate varies considerably between individuals. Fitness, genetics, age, sleep, stress, illness, medications, hydration, alcohol, temperature and training load can all influence it. So I'm not interested in comparing my resting heart rate with someone else's. I'm interested in comparing me with me. That's where wearable data becomes useful. Instead of asking: “Is 53 good?” I'm asking: “What is happening to my baseline over time?” And that distinction matters. PART 2 — MY RHR STORY BEGAN WITH A RISE When I first looked at this data, I focused on January and February. My monthly resting heart rate had climbed: January: 56 bpm. February: 57 bpm. Those numbers weren't alarming. I was experiencing higher levels of stress than usual at that time, and I was even prepared for the stress. But relative to my baseline, (55 bpm) the rise caught my attention. And that's an important distinction. A wearable isn't diagnosing why something happened. It can't look at 57 and tell me: “Andrea, this is stress.” But it can show me that something has changed. Then I can look at the rest of my life. How am I sleeping? How am I training? What's my stress level? Am I recovering? What has changed? That's when data becomes feedback. I was ready to implement some stress reduction strategies to get my RHR and nervous system back to its baseline. PART 3 — THEN THE PATTERN CHANGED After February, here's what happened: March: 54. April: 53. May: 56 (International Trip impacted this data) June: 53. July: 55. August: 53. And I love this part of the story because it wasn't a perfectly straight line. My RHR didn't simply go: 57...56...55...54...53. Real physiology rarely works like that. There were fluctuations. May went back to 56. July went to 55. But my resting heart rate kept returning to 53. April: 53. June: 53. August: 53. That's when I began wondering whether I was seeing something more meaningful than a few good months. And now I have another piece of evidence. PART 4 — THE NEW SIX-MONTH RESULT My newest WHOOP six-month report covers February 23 through August 21, 2026. And this is where the story gets interesting. My previous six-month average resting heart rate was: 55 bpm. My newest six-month average is: 54 bpm. WHOOP shows that as: 2% lower than the previous six months. One beat per minute doesn't sound dramatic. But I'm not looking for dramatic. I'm looking for adaptation. Something to show me that my body responded to the extra recovery that I was implementing to buffer the higher stress. For the first time in this particular story, the six-month average itself has moved down. And that means I'm no longer looking only at a few isolated low readings. The trend is beginning to move. PART 5 — THE AVERAGE WAS HIDING THE STORY This may be my favorite lesson from this entire experiment. Earlier, when I looked at a different six-month window, my average RHR was 55 bpm. And the previous six months? Also 55. If I had stopped there, I could have concluded: Nothing changed. But underneath that average was a changing pattern. My RHR had risen to 57 in February. This makes sense to me when I glance at the data. Then it repeatedly returned to 53 with my focus being on rest/recovery. And eventually the rolling six-month average moved from 55 to 54. This is why one measurement rarely tells the whole story. Trends matter. And sometimes your body is changing before the average catches up. PART 6 — 57 TO 53 There's another way to look at the data. February was my highest monthly average in this January–August period: 57 bpm. August is: 53 bpm. That's approximately 7% lower than that February high. I want to be careful with this number because I'm comparing two monthly endpoints—not two six-month averages. So I wouldn't call this a 7% improvement in my overall cardiovascular health. But it is another signal inside the larger pattern. What was happening in February? What is currently happening in August? And when multiple signals begin pointing in the same direction, (showing an improvement) I'm  paying attention. PART 7 — WHAT CHANGED? This is where I think self-experimentation becomes powerful. I didn't respond to the higher numbers by simply exercising harder. I've spent this year becoming much more intentional about recovery and regulation. Sleep. Daily movement. Zone 2 work. Meditation. Hydration. Infrared sauna. Red-light therapy. Paying attention to training strain. And increasingly, listening to what my physiology is telling me instead of automatically pushing through fatigue. I've also been experimenting with removing alcohol at different times this year, and the changes I've seen in recovery, HRV, sleep stress and resting heart rate have given me another variable to continue watching. I can't take this dataset and say: “This one behavior caused my RHR to fall.” There are too many variables. But I can say: The environment surrounding my physiology changed—and my trend changed with it. That's worth paying attention to. PART 8 — WHY DOES A LOWER RHR MATTER? In many people, particularly when associated with aerobic fitness, a lower resting heart rate can reflect a heart that is able to pump blood efficiently with fewer beats at rest. Training can increase stroke volume—the amount of blood pumped with each heartbeat. That means the heart may not need to beat as frequently to deliver the same cardiac output at rest. Autonomic regulation also plays a role. The sympathetic nervous system helps mobilize us for action. The parasympathetic nervous system supports rest-and-recovery processes. Resting heart rate reflects influences from both, along with many other physiological factors. That's why I don't view RHR as a standalone score. I view it as one piece of my physiological dashboard. RHR. HRV. Sleep. Recovery. Training load. And, most importantly: How I actually feel. PART 9 — THIS CONNECTS DIRECTLY TO THE MOVEMENT LOOP Remember the Movement Loop we've been building in Phase 3: Movement → Brain Activation → Attention → Learning → Recovery → Adaptation → Performance → Greater Capacity. My RHR data brings us directly back to the part of the loop I don't want us to overlook: Recovery → Adaptation. Exercise provides the stimulus. But we don't become fitter during the stimulus itself. The body needs an opportunity to respond to that stimulus. To repair. To replenish. To adapt. And eventually, that adaptation may become visible in our trends. That's why recovery isn't the opposite of performance. Recovery is part of the process that makes performance possible. PART 10 — THE BIGGER LESSON This episode isn't really about whether your resting heart rate should be 53. Mine doesn't need to be yours. Your number might be completely different. The question is: Do you know your baseline? And more importantly: Do you know which direction it's moving? What increases it? What decreases it? Because your physiology is constantly responding to the way you're living. Training. Sleeping. Recovering. Working. Traveling. Eating. Drinking. Managing stress. And sometimes those changes are happening quietly beneath the surface. Until you measure them. PART 11 — HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS IN YOUR OWN LIFE So now I want to turn this over to you. I've shown you my resting heart rate story. What's yours? And you don't need five years of WHOOP data to begin looking for it. You just need enough information to establish your baseline, and then you need to become curious about what causes that baseline to change. Here's how I would start. STEP 1 — FIND A WAY TO MEASURE YOUR RESTING HEART RATE CONSISTENTLY First, find the measurement tool that works for you. Maybe that's WHOOP. Maybe it's an Apple Watch, Garmin, Oura Ring, Fitbit, or another wearable. Or maybe you're tracking your resting heart rate another way. The specific device isn't the most important part of this experiment. You can even just count your pulse beats that you get in one minute while resting. Just stay consistent as you measure. If you're going to look for a trend, you want to compare measurements collected under reasonably consistent conditions. We're not trying to find the lowest number we can possibly produce. We're trying to understand our normal pattern. STEP 2 — LEARN YOUR BASELINE Next, don't start by asking: “Is my resting heart rate good?” Start with: “What is normal for me?” Look at your data over time. If you have it, look at your last month. Then three months. Six months. And eventually a year. What number—or range—does your RHR tend to return to? For me, I knew that my baseline was somewhere around the mid-50s. That's why 56 and 57 caught my attention. Those numbers weren't necessarily concerning when compared with somebody else's resting heart rate. Someone else I know has a RHR of 80 and that's in the normal range. The higher scores mattered to me, because they represented a change from my baseline. That's the first lesson: Compare yourself with yourself. STEP 3 — LOOK FOR THE DEVIATIONS Once you understand your baseline, look for the places where your data moves away from it. Don't immediately label the change as good or bad. Just become curious. When did your RHR rise? When did it fall? Was it one unusual night? Several days? Several weeks? Or did your monthly average actually begin to move? This is where we stop looking at individual dots and begin looking for a pattern. STEP 4 — PUT YOUR LIFE NEXT TO YOUR DATA Now comes the part that I think is the most interesting. Take the RHR graph and mentally place your life beside it. Ask yourself: What was happening here? Was work unusually stressful? Were you traveling? Were you sleeping less? Were you sick? Had your training load increased? Were you drinking more—or less—alcohol? Had you changed your exercise routine? Were you recovering differently? What was happening emotionally? What was happening physically? This was important in interpreting my own data. When I saw my RHR increase in January and February, I knew what was happening in my life during those months. And when I saw May increase, I also had context: I had been traveling internationally, and I knew there were issues with several days of my wearable data. Context changes interpretation. A graph can show you what changed. Your life can help you investigate why. STEP 5 — LOOK AT MORE THAN ONE METRIC Here's another important point. Don't interpret resting heart rate completely by itself. Put it next to other information. What was happening with your HRV? Your sleep? Your recovery? Your training load? Your energy? Your stress? And most importantly: How did you feel? One metric gives us a clue. Multiple signals moving together can give us a much richer picture. Think of it as your own physiological dashboard. You're looking for relationships between the signals rather than allowing one number to define whether you're doing well. STEP 6 — CHOOSE ONE VARIABLE TO EXPERIMENT WITH Now we move from observation to action. Ask: “What is one behavior I could change consistently and then watch what happens?” Maybe it's getting to bed earlier. Maybe it's improving hydration. Adding more Zone 2 exercise. Building recovery days into your training. Meditating. Walking. Changing your alcohol intake. Or simply protecting more downtime during a stressful period. Choose something that's meaningful and realistic for you. Then give it time. This is important because we're not trying to manipulate tomorrow morning's score. We're trying to see whether consistent behavior begins to influence a trend. STEP 7 — MEASURE AGAIN And now we come back to the beginning. Measure. Notice. Experiment. Adjust. And measure again. You might even keep a very simple note beside your data: What changed this month? You could write: Higher workload. Travel. Better sleep. Started Zone 2. Stopped drinking alcohol. Illness. Vacation. More recovery. Over time, you begin creating something much more useful than a collection of numbers. You're creating a map of how your body responds to your life. DISCOVER YOUR RHR STORY So here's the experiment I want to leave you with. Pull up your resting heart rate data. And ask yourself these five questions: What is my baseline? When does my RHR move above or below that baseline? What was happening in my life when it changed? What other physiological signals moved with it? What is one behavior I could intentionally change and measure over time? Then zoom out. Don't judge yourself by tomorrow morning. Look for the story. Because the goal isn't to achieve somebody else's resting heart rate. The goal is to understand your own physiology well enough to recognize when something changes. And then have strategies available to respond. That's where measurement becomes useful. It moves us from simply collecting information... to using information to make better decisions. REVIEW — WHAT DID WE LEARN? Before we close, let's pull everything together. We started with one simple metric: resting heart rate. We learned that RHR tells us how many times our heart beats per minute while we're at rest—but the number becomes much more useful when we stop comparing ourselves with other people and begin comparing ourselves with ourselves. Then we looked at my own story. My RHR rose to: 56 bpm in January. And then: 57 bpm in February. Because I understood what was happening in my life at the time, those increases gave me information I could use. Rather than simply pushing harder, I became increasingly intentional about recovery. Then the pattern began to change. My RHR repeatedly returned toward 53. And eventually something even more interesting happened. My newest six-month average moved from: 55 bpm → 54 bpm. WHOOP identified that as: 2% lower than my previous six-month average. One beat per minute. Not dramatic. But that's exactly the point. We're not looking for dramatic. We're looking for patterns. We're looking for evidence that the system may be adapting over time. And that's why my biggest lesson from this experiment isn't: “My resting heart rate is 53.” It's: “I understand my resting heart rate better than I did before.” I know my baseline. I know some of the circumstances that push it higher. I'm beginning to understand some of the behaviors associated with it moving lower. And most importantly, I know to keep watching the trend. CONCLUSION — BECOME A STUDENT OF YOUR OWN PHYSIOLOGY This brings us back to something Dr. Kristen Holmes reinforced in Episode 405: What gets measured gets improved. But after looking at this data, I want to expand that idea. What gets measured gives us information. What gets measured consistently reveals patterns. And what gets measured over time can reveal a story. That's the opportunity I hope you take away from this episode. Become curious about your own physiology. Not obsessed with it. Not controlled by a score. Curious. Learn your baseline. Notice when something changes. Put that change into the context of your life. Experiment thoughtfully. And then zoom back out and see what happened. Because ultimately, we're not collecting data just to collect more data. We're trying to turn: Data → Awareness → Action → Adaptation. And that brings us right back to our Movement Loop: Movement → Brain Activation → Attention → Learning → Recovery → Adaptation → Performance → Greater Capacity. Your resting heart rate is only one metric. But it gives us a perfect example of what adaptation can look like when we stop staring at today's number and start paying attention to the larger pattern. So sometime after listening to this episode, open your own data. Go back three months. Six months. A year if you can. And ask yourself: “What story has my body been trying to tell me?” You might be surprised by what you find. COMING NEXT — BONUS EPISODE 4 And there's one part of my own physiological dashboard that I deliberately haven't explored deeply today. Sleep. Because recovery doesn't end when we stop exercising. Some of the most important recovery processes happen while we're asleep. So before we return to Dr. John Medina and move deeper into attention, learning, and cognition, I want to stay with the recovery side of our Movement Loop for one more bonus episode. In Bonus Episode 4, we're going to investigate restorative sleep. What exactly is restorative sleep? How can we measure it? What can our sleep data tell us? And perhaps most importantly: How can we use that information to improve the way we recover, adapt, and perform? We'll apply the same approach we used today. Not just: “How did I sleep last night?” But: “What story is my sleep telling me over time?” Because movement creates the stimulus. Recovery creates the opportunity to adapt. And sleep may be one of the most important places where that recovery takes place. I'll see you next time for Bonus Episode 4: The Story Behind My Restorative Sleep. REFERENCES [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 405 “Movement Isn't Enough: How Recovery Drives Adaptation”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/movement-isnt-enough-how-recovery-drives-real-adaptation/   [ii] Health Direct “What is RHR?” https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/resting-heart-rate

SCRIPTURE- Colossians 3:23“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”REFLECTION- LaurenMUSIC- Holy is His Name by 7pm Sunday Choir (YouTube)NOTES-PRAYER OF LETTING GOTo You do I belong, O God,into Your hands I surrender my life.Pour out Your Spirit upon methat I may love You perfectly,and serve You faithfullyuntil my soul rests in You.

Being passed over, dismissed, or disregarded, especially when you are the one with experience, expertise, or a genuine stake in the outcome, is one of the most frustrating experiences in human life. And the instinct that rises in response is entirely predictable: we want to be heard, we want to prove ourselves, and we want to make sure our voice lands where it matters. But Genesis 50:20 holds a truth that quietly dismantles our grip on control: what others intend for harm, God intends for good. Joseph had every reason to demand a different outcome, to protest the injustice of what was done to him, and to insist on a vote he was never given. Instead, his story became one of the most breathtaking examples of God's sovereignty over circumstances that looked entirely out of control. This episode invites us into the hard and humbling art of silence — not the silence of giving God the silent treatment, but the silence that keeps us humble, that allows us to hear rather than speak, and that creates space for God's voice to fill what we are so eager to fill with our own. God spoke to Moses alone in the desert, to David alone with his father's sheep, and sent Jesus into the world without parades or fanfare. His greatest movements often happen in the quiet. When we allow His voice to reign above our need to be right, heard, or in control, something remarkable becomes possible: lives are changed, and our own hearts are shaped in the process. Today's Bible Verse "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."— Genesis 50:20, NIV Ponder Today We like to have our say because we like control. Even when we are right, pride can convince us we deserve the megaphone. Recognizing that impulse is the first step toward the humility that creates room for God's voice. When we are speaking, we are not listening — and we are not learning. The discipline of choosing silence over self-assertion is not passivity. It is one of the most active and difficult forms of faith available to us. God consistently speaks into lives that are quiet and still. Moses in the desert, David with the sheep, Jesus arriving without fanfare — God's most significant movements rarely come with the noise we expect. Stillness is often where He shows up. Outside our own actions, there is very little we can actually control. Health, relationships, other people's decisions, the small and large disruptions of daily life — our voice, experience, and determination cannot force most things into submission. Resting in that truth is not defeat. It is wisdom. God is the author of what is good, true, and right — and He will ensure your feet are set on a firm path toward His hope and goodness. No matter how unheard or overlooked you feel, His sovereignty over the situation is not diminished by your lack of a vote. A Prayer for You Today Lord, it is all too easy to gloss over the truth that You will fight for us and we need only to be still. We like the idea of Your sovereignty, but only as far as it allows our opinions, voices, and control to remain. Grant us humility and a divine understanding of what it means to step back, sit in the silence, and allow You not only to handle our situations but to shape our hearts in the process. May we remember that You are the author of what is good, true, and right, and that no matter how little we feel heard or respected, You set our feet on a firm path toward Your hope, joy, and goodness. We praise You for this truth that we can rest in. Thank You for who You are, God. Forever, Amen. Want More?

From 08/17 Hour 3: The Washington Commanders got the win over Miami on Friday, but Chris Russell thinks there a lot of room for improvement. The Commanders rested 26 players on Friday night. Do you think everyone should play against Detroit on Saturday?

Shannon Sharpe, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson and Iso Joe Johnson react to Dak Prescott calling Cowboys offense Greatest There Is, Shedeur Sanders gets his shot, Jeremiyah Love injures ankle, Tom Brady rips NFL starters and Aaron Donald works out with Rams for 2nd time! Subscribe to Nightcap presented by PrizePicks so you don’t miss out on any new drops! Download the PrizePicks app today and use code SHANNON to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup! Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/NI... 0:00 - Dak Prescott dubbed the Dallas unit the Greatest Offense There is7:55 - Todd Monken on Shedeur starting vs the Bills12:37 - Cardinals running back Jeremiyah Love out with sprained ankle26:16 - Tom Brady rips NFL starters for resting in preseason games46:57- Aaron Donald working out with Rams for 2nd time51:00 - Von Miller joins (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) #ClubSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rick Stroud and Steve Versnick break down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers preseason opener in New York, where Tampa Bay held out its starters and let backup QB Jaylen Daniels take over in the 2nd half — and he delivered, going 10-for-15 for 111 yards with a rushing touchdown while engineering a pair of comeback scoring drives. The guys explain why Todd Bowles kept Baker Mayfield and the first team out of the game (joint practices with the Jets did most of the work, and that brutal MetLife Stadium turf didn't help), then spotlight the standouts: rookie safety Ayden Garnes' pick-six, corner Damarion Williams' 11-tackle night, and Elijah Roberts flashing as a run-stopper. They also flag a rocky special teams debut for new coordinator Danny Smith, give an update on Emeka Egbuka's turf toe, and preview Saturday's home game against Kansas City — the one preseason tilt with no joint practices, meaning the real starters should finally see the field. Plus, Rick and Steve dig into where things stand on a Vita Vea extension and Baker Mayfield's new contract.Then it's over to the Rays, who followed a nine-game road winning streak by dropping three straight to the Orioles at home, blowing bullpen leads in excruciating fashion all weekend. Shane McClanahan is activated tonight as Tampa Bay looks to salvage the finale and avoid the sweep before a road trip back to Baltimore. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Andrea Samadi explores Phase 3 of the Brain's Operating System—movement, learning, and cognition—focusing on the recovery and adaptation side of the "movement loop." She revisits Dr. Kristen Holmes' insights on measuring strain, sleep, and recovery to show how movement provides the stimulus while recovery enables lasting adaptation and greater capacity. The episode offers practical steps: identify your stimulus, track recovery, find your weakest link, and use feedback to train smarter—not just harder—so measurement becomes a tool for meaningful change. IN EPISODE 405, WE WILL COVER: ✔ Why recovery is not the absence of work—it is where adaptation occurs → How recovery allows the brain and body to absorb stress and build greater capacity. ✔ Where Dr. Kristen Holmes fits into the Movement Loop → Movement creates the stimulus; recovery determines how effectively we adapt. ✔ Why measuring your data matters → What gets measured can be adjusted, repeated, and improved. ✔ How to identify your personal recovery patterns → Using sleep, HRV, resting heart rate, strain, stress, and daily behaviors to uncover what helps—or limits—your performance. ✔ Why your recovery formula is uniquely yours → The habits that improve one person's readiness may not produce the same results for someone else. ✔ How recovery helps create more predictable performance → When you understand your patterns, you can make better daily decisions instead of leaving your results to chance. ✔ How repeated behaviors become adaptation → Measure → Adjust → Repeat → Recover → Adapt → Build Capacity. ✔ Where the larger journey is taking us → A preview of The Journey of the Mind Workbook and its five-step process: Understand → Reflect → Apply → Measure → Become ✔ What comes next in the Movement Loop → A Bonus Episode applying recovery science to real-world data, followed by Dr. John Medina on how an activated brain turns experience into attention, learning, and lasting change. EP 405 — From Recovery to Adaptation: Revisiting Dr. Kristen Holmes in Phase 3 WELCOME BACK Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we bridge neuroscience, social and emotional learning, and human performance so we can create measurable improvements in our well-being, achievement, leadership, productivity, and results. I'm Andrea Samadi, and if you've been following along through Season 16, you'll know that we've been building what I call The Brain's Operating System for Human Performance—a neuroscience-based framework designed to help us understand how the different systems of the brain and body work together to influence how we learn, adapt, connect, lead, and perform. Our roadmap has five phases: Phase 1 — Regulation & Safety Where we built the foundation by asking: Is the nervous system regulated enough to learn and grow? Phase 2 — Neurochemistry & Motivation Where we explored the systems that drive us to act, persist, and pursue meaningful goals. And now, we are here—Phase 3: Movement, Learning & Cognition. This is where movement becomes the catalyst for learning, adaptation, and performance. The central idea of Phase 3 is that the brain does not change through information alone. It changes through experience. Through movement. Through challenge. Through recovery. And through the repeated process of adapting to what we ask our brain and body to do. I called the framework we are building in this phase: The Movement Loop: Movement (the stimulus) → Brain Activation (the brain responds) → Attention (the brain becomes engaged and ready to learn) → Learning (new information and experience begin changing neural pathways) → Recovery (the brain consolidates and restores) → Adaptation (the brain and body adjust to the repeated challenge) → Performance (the adaptation shows up in what we can do) → Greater Capacity (we become capable of more) Movement is the stimulus. Brain activation is the response. Attention opens the door to learning. Learning creates change. Recovery helps that change stick. Adaptation builds the system. Performance reveals the result. Greater capacity is what we gain. And then we repeat the cycle. In our last episode, EP 404, we revisited the groundbreaking work of Dr. John Ratey, who helped us understand the front end of this loop. Dr. Ratey showed us that: Movement changes the brain. Exercise activates the brain. It supports attention. It prepares us for learning. And it creates the biological conditions that allow the brain to change. But that leaves us with an important question. What happens after we create the stimulus? Because movement alone isn't enough. Training alone isn't enough. And more strain does not automatically equal more improvement. At some point, the brain and body have to recover from what we've asked them to do And that's where today's episode begins with the back end of the movement loop. WHERE THIS JOURNEY IS GOING Before we move into today's episode, I want to zoom out for a moment and share where I believe this entire journey is taking us. Because as we've been building The Brain's Operating System for Human Performance—making sense of the interviews we've gathered over the past seven years and organizing them into five phases we can all understand and apply—I realized we are doing something much bigger than simply reviewing past episodes. I had to stop for a moment and look at what we've built so far. And that's when something became clear: We are mapping a journey. We aren't finished yet—we are only in Phase 3—but as we continue into Phases 4 and 5, I think you'll begin to see the bigger picture. This is about more than learning how the brain works or connecting social and emotional learning skills to our daily lives. It's about asking: What will we actually do with everything we've learned once we've traveled through all five phases? That's what led me to what I'm calling The Journey of the Mind. We could just as easily call it The Journey of the Brain because we now understand how deeply connected the mind and brain are.[i] But for me, Journey of the Mind has a much older meaning. That phrase takes me all the way back to the late 1990s, when I had the opportunity to watch an unpublished video program with that title, created by my mentor, Bob Proctor. I had no idea where that experience would lead me. But it planted a seed. It encouraged me to stop looking outside of myself for every answer... and to begin looking inward. To become curious about my thoughts. My beliefs. My habits. My potential. And ultimately, the relationship between what happens inside of us and the results we create outside of us. That idea influenced my early writing and eventually became part of the path that led me here. And now, all these years later, I can see that the podcast has evolved into its own Journey of the Mind. Only now, we have neuroscience to help us understand what is happening along the way. We have hundreds of experts. Years of research. Stories. Experiments. Data. And our own lived experience. The five phases give us a way to bring all of that together. We began with Regulation and Safety, because before we can grow, the nervous system needs a stable foundation. Then we moved into Neurochemistry and Motivation, where we explored what drives our behavior. Now, in Phase 3, we are looking at Movement, Learning and Cognition—how experience changes the brain and how recovery and adaptation help us build greater capacity. Next, we'll move into Connection, Emotion and Social Intelligence, because none of us develops in isolation. And finally, we'll reach Integration, Meaning and Human Performance, where these systems begin to come together. And when we reach the end of Phase 5, I want to bring the entire journey into something practical. THE JOURNEY OF THE MIND WORKBOOK I'm currently developing a companion workbook for these five phases. The Journey of the Mind Workbook will help us take what we've learned and apply it to our own lives through a simple process: Understand. Reflect. Apply. Measure. Become. Understand the science. Reflect on our own patterns. Apply what we are learning. Measure what changes. And then ask the bigger question: Who are we becoming? Because the goal isn't simply to know more about neuroscience. It's to use what we know. To identify our gaps. Recognize what is working. Build a clearer understanding of how we learn, recover, connect, perform, and grow. And become more intentional about the future we are creating. The workbook is still taking shape, but it's coming. And my hope is that when we reach the end of these five phases, we won't just have more information. We'll have a map. A clearer understanding of our brain. A deeper understanding of ourselves. A way to measure our growth. And a framework for becoming who we are capable of being. Now, let's return to where we are today... Phase 3: Movement, Learning and Cognition. Before we go further, I want to give you a quick roadmap for today's episode. We're going to explore Kristen Holmes' work through 15 short parts, each one helping us move step-by-step through the recovery and adaptation side of the Movement Loop. (The left side of the loop). We'll begin by clarifying the difference between readiness and adaptation. Then we'll look at the stimulus–recovery–adaptation cycle, revisit Kristen's original idea that what gets measured gets improved, and connect that to what I've learned from tracking my own data over the past five years. From there, we'll explore the difference between training harder and training smarter, why movement is information, why the goal is not maximum strain, and how these same principles apply to learning and performance far beyond exercise. We'll also return to one of my favorite ideas from Kristen's original interview: Your competitive advantage is often built in your downtime. And finally, we'll bring everything back to the Movement Loop and ask the question that really matters: Is what I'm doing building more strain—or building greater capacity? So think of these 10 parts as a guided walk through the second half of the loop... from recovery... to adaptation... to performance... and ultimately to greater capacity. PART 1 — WHY ARE WE RETURNING TO DR. KRISTEN HOLMES? When we first interviewed Dr. Kristen Holmes in 2021 for EP 134[ii], she was Vice President of Performance Science at WHOOP. At the time, I had recently turned 50. I purchased WHOOP because I wanted to improve what I knew was my weakest link: sleep. And in that original conversation, Dr. Holmes introduced ideas that I've now carried with me for more than five years. One of them was this: “What gets measured gets improved.” Another was the idea that what we do in our downtime may actually give us our greatest competitive advantage. At the time, I understood this at one level. Sleep matters. Recovery matters. Strain matters. Your habits outside of the workout matter. But after five years of looking at my own data, I understand her message differently. And I think this is one of the most important things about revisiting experts over time. We hear something at one stage of our development... and then years later, we hear the same idea again with an entirely different level of understanding. We revisited this same 2021 interview earlier in this season during Phase 1: Regulation & Safety on EP 390.[iii] So why are we covering this topic again? Because I realized that Dr. Holmes' work sits at a critical intersection inside our Brain's Operating System. In Phase 1, her work helped us understand regulation and readiness. Her message was: Can your system handle what you are asking it to do today? But in Phase 3, the question changes. Now we're asking: Is what I'm doing today actually helping my system adapt? That's very different. In Phase 1, recovery helped us understand whether the system was ready. In Phase 3, recovery helps us understand whether the system is changing. And that's why we're returning to Dr. Kristen Holmes. Not to repeat what we learned. But to take it one level deeper. Just a note here: while I've been using WHOOP to measure my movement, sleep, strain, and recovery, WHOOP is only one tool. There are many other ways to track these patterns—from other wearable devices and apps to simple measures like sleep duration, resting heart rate, exercise intensity, energy levels, and how recovered you feel. The important point isn't the device you use. It's learning to pay attention to your own patterns and using that feedback to make better decisions. PART 2 — READINESS VS. ADAPTATION Now let's return to the Movement Loop we opened this episode with: Movement → Brain Activation → Attention → Learning → Recovery → Adaptation → Performance → Greater Capacity In our last episode, Dr. John Ratey helped us understand the front end of this loop—how movement activates the brain, supports attention, and creates the conditions for learning. Today, Dr. Kristen Holmes helps us move into the recovery and adaptation side of the loop—what happens after we create the stimulus. This is where we ask a different kind of question. In Phase 1, we looked at Kristen's work through the lens of readiness: What is my capacity today? How much strain can I tolerate? How well did I sleep? What does my HRV tell me? How recovered am I? Do I have the capacity to push? Or would backing off today serve me better? That was the Phase 1 question: Am I ready? But now, in Phase 3, we move one step further around the loop. Now we are asking: Am I adapting? Is the movement I'm doing helping me become stronger? More resilient? More efficient? Better able to recover? More capable than I was before? That is the shift from readiness to adaptation. And this is where Dr. Kristen Holmes' work becomes essential to Phase 3. Because movement may provide the stimulus... but recovery is what gives the brain and body the opportunity to respond to that stimulus, adapt, and ultimately build greater capacity. Or would backing off today serve me better? That was our Phase 1 lens. And it was foundational. Because if the nervous system is depleted, overstressed, or under-recovered, everything downstream is affected. But Phase 3 takes us another step forward. Now we are not only asking: Am I ready? We are asking: Am I adapting? ADAPTATION asks: What is changing because of what I repeatedly do? Am I becoming stronger? More resilient? More efficient? Better able to tolerate stress? Better able to recover? More capable than I was before? And this is where I think recovery is frequently misunderstood. Recovery isn't simply what happens when we stop working. Recovery is not the opposite of performance. Recovery is part of the process that creates future performance. That distinction changes everything. Because the goal is not simply to recover enough to get through today. The goal is to recover in a way that allows the brain and body to become better prepared for tomorrow. So I want to give you one sentence to keep in mind throughout this entire episode: Movement provides the stimulus. Recovery allows the adaptation. That's where Kristen Holmes' work enters Phase 3. Dr. Ratey helped us understand why movement activates the brain and creates the stimulus for change. Dr. Holmes helps us to understand what has to happen afterward if that stimulus is going to become something useful. Something the body can integrate. Something the brain can learn from. Something that eventually becomes greater capacity. PART 3 — THE STIMULUS–RECOVERY–ADAPTATION CYCLE Think about exercise for a moment. When you challenge your body, you create stress. That's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, some level of challenge is exactly what we need. It's called hormesis, right? The challenge is the signal. It tells the system: Something is being asked of me. But the signal alone isn't what we are looking for. What matters is what your body does afterward. You place a demand on the system. Then the body needs time and resources to respond to that demand. We can think of it very simply: STIMULUS → RECOVERY → ADAPTATION → GREATER CAPACITY The stimulus is the challenge. Recovery is the response period. Adaptation is the change. And greater capacity is the result. The purpose of training isn't simply to create more strain. (Which is what I did for years). The purpose is to create a strain that your system can successfully recover from and adapt to. And that idea changed the way I began looking at my own movement. For years, I thought: Harder must be better. Longer must be better. More must be better. If I could hike for three hours, that had to be better than walking for one. If I could push harder, I assumed I would get better results. If I felt exhausted after a workout, I often assumed that meant I had accomplished more. But the data started showing me something different. Sometimes more strain simply created... more strain. And if I wasn't sleeping enough...(because I was repeating the same thing without enough rest) if I wasn't recovering... if I was stacking high strain on top of stress... then I wasn't necessarily building greater capacity. I could actually be interrupting the very adaptation I was trying to create. This is why one of the most important questions in Phase 3 becomes: How much challenge can my system absorb, recover from, and adapt to? Not: How much can I force myself to do? And this takes us directly back to the lesson Kristen Holmes gave us five years ago. Because if we want to know whether the stimulus we're creating is actually working... we need feedback. We need to see the patterns. We need to understand the relationship between what we do and how our system responds. Which brings us to Part 4: PART 4 — WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS IMPROVED In our Phase 1 episode with Dr. Holmes, I shared something that has become very important to me over the past five years. Once you begin measuring your sleep, your recovery, your strain, and your habits... you stop guessing. And when you stop guessing, patterns begin to emerge. For me, some of those patterns took years to understand. I began seeing that: Too much strain + not enough sleep = poor recovery. Over and over again. I knew intuitively that I was pushing too hard. But knowing something and changing behavior are two very different things. The data eventually forced me to look at the pattern honestly. There were times when I was training hard... waking early... cutting sleep short... and then wondering why my recovery didn't improve. I was giving my system a stimulus. But I wasn't giving it enough opportunity to adapt. That distinction matters. Because the goal is not simply: How much can I do? The better question is: How much can I do, recover from, and adapt to? That is a completely different way of approaching human performance. PART 5 — MY UNDERSTANDING OF RECOVERY HAS CHANGED When I first bought WHOOP in 2021, my weakest link was sleep. I knew I needed to improve it. And I did. Not perfectly. But significantly. What I find interesting now is that as one weakness improves, another one becomes easier to see. That's the value of measurement. Your weakest link can change. In 2021, mine was sleep. Today, I can see other areas much more clearly. Strength training is one. Balancing different kinds of movement is another. And this is where I began looking beyond total exercise time. Instead, I started asking: How much time am I spending in lower intensity movement? How much time am I spending at higher intensity? What happens to my recovery when I increase strain? How much sleep do I need after harder training? How quickly do I recover? What habits seem to help me recover faster? What habits tank my recovery? That's a completely different mindset than: Did I work hard today? PART 6 — TRAIN HARDER VS. TRAIN SMARTER One of the biggest lessons I pulled from Kristen Holmes' work was the difference between training harder and training smarter. In our Phase 1 review, I shared one example that really challenged my assumptions. I went on a walk along the canal near my house. Nothing extreme. I was walking my dogs and wearing a weighted vest. And during this much more moderate activity, I was able to reach Zones 4 and 5 for short periods. That surprised me, because those higher-intensity zones could sometimes be difficult for me to reach even during much longer hikes. I noticed the same thing when I started comparing different trails here in Arizona. When I first moved to AZ, Camelback Mountain—especially the Echo Canyon Trail—was my go-to hike. I used to hike it after work and again on the weekends. It was short, steep, and intense—about a 2.5-mile round trip on Echo Canyon, with the Cholla side a bit longer. So when I later moved to another part of the Valley and started hiking Telegraph Pass at South Mountain, I initially thought: This isn't going to give me the same workout. Telegraph Pass felt less intense. It didn't have that same steep, all-out challenge I was used to on Camelback. But once I started measuring my hikes, or learning new trails that were longer, I saw something I didn't expect. The longer, lower-intensity hikes were sometimes producing more overall strain than the shorter, harder hikes. That honestly shocked me. Because I had always assumed that if something felt harder, it must be giving me better results. But the data showed me that wasn't always true. A longer period of sustained effort—even at a lower intensity—could place a greater total load on my system than a shorter burst of very difficult exercise. And that taught me something important: How hard something feels in the moment is not always the same thing as the total load it places on your body. That was one of the moments when measurement changed the way I thought about exercise. I stopped asking only: How hard did that feel? And started asking: How did my body actually respond? And this is where data becomes useful. Not because the number knows everything. But because the number can reveal something we might otherwise miss. It can become feedback. And feedback helps us learn. PART 7 — MOVEMENT IS INFORMATION Movement is not just calories burned. I hardly ever think about calories anymore. There was a time when I could tell you almost exactly how much effort it took to burn off certain foods. But I think about movement very differently today. Movement is not punishment for what we ate. Movement is not simply exercise. Movement is information. Every time we move, we send signals to the brain and body about the demands being placed on the system. How much strength do I need? How much endurance? How much balance, coordination, speed, or cardiovascular capacity? And when we repeatedly expose ourselves to manageable challenge, the system begins to learn from those signals. It responds. It adjusts. And, with adequate recovery, it adapts. So movement isn't just something we do to burn energy. Movement is one of the ways we teach the brain and body what we want them to become capable of doing.   PART 8 — THE GOAL IS NOT MAXIMUM STRAIN This brings me to what may be the biggest takeaway from today's episode. The goal is not maximum strain. The goal is the right amount of strain for your current capacity. Because too little challenge may not create enough stimulus. But too much challenge without adequate recovery can work against the very adaptation we're trying to create. And this is where Kristen Holmes' message about strain and recovery becomes so powerful. In Phase 1, we used recovery to ask: Should I push today? In Phase 3, we can use recovery to ask: Is my current training producing the adaptation I want? That is a much bigger question. And it applies far beyond exercise. PART 9 — THE SAME PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO LEARNING Think about learning. We don't learn best by forcing information into the brain endlessly without rest. We need exposure. Attention. Practice. Then space. Sleep. Recovery. Integration. And then we return to the material again. Spaced Repetition. The brain changes through repeated cycles of challenge and recovery. So while we're talking today about Kristen Holmes, recovery, movement, and strain... the same architecture appears in learning. It appears in work. It appears in leadership. It appears in stress management. It appears almost anywhere humans are trying to grow. Challenge alone doesn't guarantee growth. Challenge + recovery + repetition creates the conditions for adaptation. PART 10 — YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS STILL BUILT IN YOUR DOWNTIME One of my favorite ideas from my original conversation with Kristen was something we revisited in Phase 1. Listen to Dr. Holmes' CLIP here. She talked about the importance of what we do in our downtime. That what happens outside of the performance itself may give us our competitive advantage. Five years later, I think I finally understand how deep that idea goes. Your workout may last an hour. Your hike may last two hours. Your presentation may last 45 minutes. Your game may last an afternoon. But adaptation is happening across the rest of the day. What are you doing with the other hours? Are you sleeping? Hydrating? Fueling? Managing stress? Allowing the nervous system to come back down? Giving the body what it needs to repair? That downtime isn't empty time. It's part of the training. PART 11 — RECOVERY IS AN ACTIVE PROCESS This is another mindset shift that helped me. I used to think of recovery as: Doing nothing. Resting. Taking a day off. But recovery can actually be very intentional. For me, over the past several years, that has included things like: prioritizing sleep hydration meditation breathing spending time outside lower-intensity movement infrared sauna red light therapy And again, the point isn't that everyone should copy my routine. The important question is: What actually helps your system recover? That takes us back to one of the central ideas of our recent Bonus Episodes. PART 12 — FIND YOUR GAP In Bonus Episode 2[iv], we introduced the idea of finding your gap. Instead of copying someone else's recipe for high performance, identify the variable that is currently limiting you. Maybe your gap is sleep. Maybe it's hydration. Maybe it's high stress. Maybe it's too much intensity. Maybe it's not enough movement. Maybe it's inconsistent recovery habits. Maybe it's strength. The point is that your gap is personal. And it can change. This is one of the most useful things measurement can give us. It can show us: Where is the breakdown in my loop? Let's return to the Movement Loop. Movement → Brain Activation → Attention → Learning → Recovery → Adaptation → Performance → Greater Capacity Where is your gap? Are you not moving enough? Are you moving but not recovering? Are you recovering but not challenging yourself enough to create adaptation? Are you pushing constantly without allowing your system to consolidate the gains? If you can locate your gap, you know where to begin. PART 13 — THE MOVEMENT LOOP THROUGH DR. KRISTEN HOLMES Let's walk through the entire loop now through the lens of Dr. Ratey and Dr. Holmes' work. MOVEMENT We create a stimulus. We challenge the brain and body. BRAIN ACTIVATION Movement changes our physiological and neurological state. This is where Dr. Ratey's work helps us understand why movement prepares the brain. ATTENTION An activated brain is better positioned to engage. LEARNING The brain receives information and experience. But learning isn't finished simply because we experienced something. RECOVERY Now the system needs space. This is where Kristen Holmes enters the loop. How well did we sleep? How much stress are we carrying? What was our total strain? How prepared is the system to absorb what we've done? ADAPTATION This is where the system changes. Over time, repeated cycles of challenge and recovery create new capacity. PERFORMANCE We begin to see the result. We move differently. Think differently. Learn more efficiently. Handle greater demands. Recover faster. GREATER CAPACITY And this is what makes the loop a loop. Because now tomorrow's starting point may be different from yesterday's. The system has adapted. So we can begin again. The WHOOP wearable device may have started with elite athletes, but optimizing performance isn't only for elite athletes. Any of us can measure our patterns, learn from the feedback, and use that information to build greater capacity. PART 14 — THIS CHANGES HOW I THINK ABOUT PERFORMANCE For most of my life, I thought performance was primarily about effort. Work harder. Try harder. Push harder. And effort still matters. But effort without adaptation can become a dead end. What I'm learning through this phase is that performance is much more dynamic. You need the stimulus. You need the challenge. You need the work. But you also need recovery. Because recovery is what allows the system to absorb the work. And that leads me to an important sentence I want us to remember: The goal isn't to prove how much stress you can tolerate. The goal is to become capable of more over time. That's adaptation. PART 15 — FIVE YEARS LATER, DR. HOLMES'  MESSAGE MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT When we first interviewed Kristen Holmes in 2021, the idea that what gets measured gets improved resonated with me immediately. That idea is partly why I bought a wearable device in the first place. I wanted data. I wanted answers. I wanted to improve sleep. But five years later, I think the lesson is bigger than measurement. Measurement itself isn't the goal. The goal is feedback. And feedback only becomes useful when we do something with it. Measure. Write it down somewhere. Observe what's happening month to month and year to year. Adjust. Recover. Adapt. Repeat. Measurement closes the learning/performance loop. That's why Dr. Holmes' work was worth revisiting here in Phase 3. Not simply because she studies recovery. But because measurement gives us information about whether the behaviors we repeat are actually creating the changes we want. PRACTICAL APPLICATION — HOW TO USE THIS THIS WEEK So let's make this practical. You do not need WHOOP. You do not need a wearable. You don't need complicated equipment. You simply need to start paying attention. Identify your current stimulus. What are you asking your body and brain to adapt to right now? Maybe it's: exercise strength training a new learning goal a demanding work schedule stress adapting to intensive heat in your new sauna Know what you're asking the system to do. Identify your recovery. Ask: How am I sleeping? How am I managing stress? Am I giving myself enough downtime? How do I feel the day after harder efforts? What patterns do I notice? Watch the relationship between effort and recovery. Does more effort always give you better results? Or is there a point where more becomes counterproductive? Find your gap. What is your weakest link right now? Don't try to fix everything. Start there. Look for evidence of adaptation. Ask yourself: Am I becoming more capable? Can I handle something today that used to be difficult? Am I recovering faster? Am I stronger? More focused? More resilient? If the answer is yes, your loop is working. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION To review and conclude this week's episode 405,  let's bring this episode together. We brought Dr. Kristen Holmes back into our roadmap intentionally. In Phase 1: Regulation and Safety, Dr. Holmes helped us understand recovery as readiness. Sleep. HRV. Strain. Stress. Recovery. The question was: Is the system prepared for today? Today, in Phase 3: Movement, Learning and Cognition, we've looked at those same ideas through a different lens. Now the question is: Is the system adapting for tomorrow? That's the progression. Dr. John Ratey helped us understand that movement provides the brain with a powerful stimulus. Kristen Holmes helps us understand that the story doesn't end with the stimulus. We need recovery. Because: Movement provides the stimulus. Recovery allows the adaptation. Adaptation improves performance. Performance builds greater capacity. And then the loop begins again. ONE QUESTION TO TAKE WITH YOU Before you move on with your day, I want you to ask yourself one question: Am I creating more strain…or am I creating more capacity? They are not the same thing. You can push harder without improving. You can work longer without adapting. You can accumulate strain without building capacity. The goal is not simply to do more. The goal is to create a system where you can become more. FINAL TAKEAWAY And this brings us right back to Kristen Holmes's message from 2021: What gets measured gets improved. But today, I would add something to it: What gets measured can be adjusted. What gets adjusted can be repeated (in this new way) And what gets repeated—paired with the right amount of recovery—can become adaptation. That is how capacity grows. And that is where Kristen Holmes fits into Phase 3—not simply as an expert on recovery, but as a critical part of the science of change. And this idea—turning what we measure into meaningful change—is also shaping the larger vision for this podcast. At the start of this episode, we mentioned I'm developing a companion workbook called Journey of the Mind—a practical guide designed to help us move beyond simply listening to these ideas and begin applying them in our own lives. The workbook will guide us through five steps to apply what we have covered on this podcast. Understand. Reflect. Apply. Measure. Become More. With each episode we've covered. And this workbook began with an unexpected spark of inspiration. So, I want to offer one quiet acknowledgment: To the person who quietly helped illuminate this path for me—thank you. Sometimes, the people who influence the direction of our lives may never fully realize what their presence helped awaken. My vision from that the spark of inspiration I received will travel through this work and reach you listening—inspiring you to move forward on your own path and create a life that is more intentional, meaningful, and fulfilling than the one you knew before. Because inspiration doesn't end with the person who first awakens it. It moves through us. And when we act on it, one spark can grow into something that serves many others—far beyond what either person could have created individually. We'll explore the transformative power of human connection more deeply in Phase 4. Then, in Phase 5, we'll examine how connection, meaning, and contribution can become something that continues growing beyond us. But until then, we'll continue building this journey—one insight, one application, and one measurable change at a time. COMING NEXT Before we move on to Dr. John Medina and the next part of the Movement Loop, we'll cover our next Bonus Episode and show you what adaptation can actually look like in real life. In Bonus EP 3, I'm going to take you inside one of the clearest changes I've seen in my own data over the past several years: my resting heart rate. We'll look at where it started, how it changed, what may have contributed to that change, and why resting heart rate can become a useful window into how the body is adapting over time. Because this is really what Phase 3 is about. Not simply moving more. Not simply collecting data. But asking: Is what I'm doing actually changing my capacity? Then, for EP 406 we'll return to the research of Dr. John Medina and explore the next critical link in the Movement Loop: Attention. Because movement can activate the brain—but activation alone doesn't guarantee learning. The brain must first notice what matters. It must direct its attention. Hold that attention long enough to encode new information. And return to that information if it is going to become something we can remember and use. Dr. Ratey helped us understand how movement prepares the brain. Dr. Kristen Holmes helped us understand how recovery allows the brain and body to adapt. And Dr. Medina will help us understand what happens between those two points: How does an activated brain turn experience into learning? Because movement may open the door— but attention determines what enters and stays behind that door. And we'll reinforce one of the central ideas of this journey: What we repeatedly do shapes who we become. The question is: Are those repeated actions expanding our capacity and moving us toward our highest level of performance—or quietly holding us back? That's where we'll turn next as we continue building the Movement Loop. I'll see you next time. EP 405 — KEY TAKEAWAYS ✔ Why Kristen Holmes belongs in both Phase 1 and Phase 3 ✔ The difference between recovery for readiness and recovery for adaptation ✔ Why movement alone does not create improvement ✔ The relationship between stimulus → recovery → adaptation → greater capacity ✔ Why the goal is not maximum strain, but the right dose of strain ✔ How recovery completes the Movement Loop ✔ Why your weakest link can change as you improve ✔ How measurement provides feedback for better decisions ✔ Why downtime is part of the performance process ✔ The difference between accumulating strain and building capacity THE MOVEMENT LOOP Movement → Brain Activation → Attention → Learning → Recovery → Adaptation → Performance → Greater Capacity → Repeat Remember: Movement provides the stimulus. Recovery allows the adaptation. The goal isn't maximum strain. The goal is greater capacity. RESOURCES: Watch the full interview from 2021 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOgivjYhhW8 CLIP 1 Dr. Kristen Holmes https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Lg7FiWJKZc4 Phase 1: Regulation & Safety The Foundation Core Question: Is the nervous system safe enough to learn? Everything begins with regulation. Before we can focus, learn, lead, or perform, the brain first asks one fundamental question: Am I safe? Throughout Phase 1, our guests showed us that regulation isn't simply about reducing stress—it's about creating the biological conditions that allow the brain to learn, adapt, and thrive. Together we explored: Baland Jalal – how sleep, curiosity, imagination, and creativity prepare the brain for learning. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/hypnagogic-genius-capture-your-best-ideas-at-the-edge-of-sleep/ Dr. Bruce Perry – why regulation, rhythm, and relationships form the foundation of every healthy nervous system.  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/safety-first-why-a-regulated-brain-is-the-key-to-learning/ Dr. Sui Wong – how lifestyle medicine and autonomic balance build lifelong brain resilience. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/your-eyes-the-brain-s-early-warning-system/ Rohan Dixit – how heart rate variability gives us real-time feedback on our ability to regulate stress. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/breathe-to-reset-how-hrv-tech-reveals-hidden-stress/ Dr. Kristen Holmes – how recovery metrics reveal our physiological readiness to perform. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/kristen-holmes-from-whoopcom-on-unlocking-a-better-you-measuring-sleep-recovery-and-strain/ Dr. Antonio Zadra – how sleep and dreaming consolidate memories, regulate emotions, and generate insight. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/when-brains-dream-how-sleep-integrates-emotion-insight-and-creativity/ Together these conversations taught us that sleep and stress regulation aren't optional—they're the operating system that allows every higher brain function to work. Phase 2: Motivation & Neurochemistry The Direction Core Question: What moves us into action? Once the brain feels safe, it becomes ready to pursue goals. In Phase 2, we explored the internal chemistry that transforms intention into action. Our experts helped us understand that sustainable motivation isn't about willpower—it's about aligning our beliefs, thoughts, attention, energy, and movement. Together we discovered: Bob Proctor — our beliefs determine the direction of our lives. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/belief-first-the-neuroscience-of-motivation/ Dr. Carolyn Leaf — our thinking literally changes our brain chemistry. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/thoughts-as-biology-how-your-mind-shapes-neurochemistry/ Dr. John Medina — attention determines what the brain encodes and remembers. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/theory-of-mind-the-missing-link-between-attention-reward-and-motivation Dr. Anna Lembke- Dopamine, Motivation and Why the Brain Repeats Behavior https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/dopamine-nation-the-pleasure%e2%80%93pain-balance-that-drives-motivation/ Dr. Friederike Fabritius — managing our energy allows high performance to become sustainable. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/fun-fear-focus-closing-the-motivation-loop/ Dr. Chuck Hillman & Paul Zientarski — movement activates the brain, preparing it to learn. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/move-to-learn-how-movement-activates-the-brain-and-fuels-motivation/ By the end of Phase 2, we introduced what became The Motivation Loop, showing how beliefs influence thoughts, thoughts influence actions, actions create results, and results reinforce future beliefs. Phase 3: Movement, Learning & Human Performance The Transformation Core Question: How does movement change the brain—and how does recovery transform that change into performance? Now we're taking the next step. Phase 3 builds on everything we've learned so far. If Phase 1 created a regulated nervous system... If Phase 2 created motivation and direction... Phase 3 explains how the brain and body actually become stronger. Together we've explored this process through conversations with: Dr. Chuck Hillman & Paul Zientarski — why movement activates the brain before learning. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/movement-first-how-a-20%e2%80%91minute-walk-lights-up-the-brain/ Dr. John Ratey — how exercise builds a healthier, younger brain. https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/movement-matters-how-every-move-rewires-the-brain/ Dr. Kristen Holmes — why recovery determines adaptation and readiness. Dr. John Medina — how attention transforms movement into lasting learning. Jason Whitrock — how metabolism and cellular energy fuel long-term performance. WHERE WE ARE GOING NEXT Phase 4 — Connection, Emotion & Social Intelligence The Human System Core Question: How do we thrive with other people? The brain didn't evolve in isolation—it evolved through relationships. In Phase 4, we'll explore emotional intelligence, empathy, communication, trust, leadership, and psychological safety to understand how our relationships shape learning, well-being, and performance. Phase 5 — Integration & Human Performance The Complete System Core Question: How do all the systems work together? In our final phase, we'll bring everything together—regulation, motivation, movement, emotion, relationships, learning, and recovery—into one integrated framework. We'll discover how these systems work together to create measurable improvements in our well-being, achievement, leadership, productivity, and results. REFERENCES: [i] A Neurologist Looks at Mind and Brain, published October 1, 2003, by Phirose Hansotia.   [ii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 134 with Dr. Kristen Holmes “Unlocking a Better You: Measuring Sleep, Recovery and Strain.”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/kristen-holmes-from-whoopcom-on-unlocking-a-better-you-measuring-sleep-recovery-and-strain/   [iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE 390 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/what-gets-measured-gets-improved-sleep-recovery-peak-performance/   [iv]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast BONUS EP 2 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/find-the-gap-how-recovery-unlocks-predictable-performance                      

A guided sleep meditation for deep rest, spoken as the afternoon fades, when this hour sits between what was and what is coming. Session 071 of Your Quiet Moment's nightly meditation series: The Art of Stillness.This is a long-form spoken meditation — a calm narrator guides you for roughly four hours while you fall asleep and stay asleep. You are welcome to listen from the beginning, or drift off and let the words continue without you.Chapters:00:00 — Welcome and settling into rest03:00 — Guided body scan, releasing the day from head to toe08:00 — Dream journeys: the garden of quiet hours, the library of soft pages, the house of quiet windows (gentle repeating cycles)3:25:00 — Affirmations for deep, unhurried rest3:30:00 — Closing whispers and the doorway of sleepThere is nothing you need to do and nowhere you need to go. If you wake in the night, the meditation will still be here.Your Quiet Moment publishes guided spoken meditations for rest, stillness, and sleep.This episode was created with AI assistance.Tags: guided meditation, sleep meditation, deep rest, bedtime meditation, calm mind, stillness, your quiet moment, spoken meditation, fall asleep, night meditationDISCLAIMER

✨ A 10-minute meditation for honoring the pause between breaths, between moments, between who you were and who you are becoming. This session explores the sacred space of not-doing. We practice resting in the pause - the gap between thoughts, between inhale and exhale - where peace lives quietly. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 The Space Between 01:30 Not-Doing as Practice 03:00 Breathing Into the Pause 04:30 The Gap Between Thoughts 06:00 Resting in Stillness 07:30 The Sacred Ordinary 09:00 Three Pausing Breaths 09:50 Carrying the Pause Forward For anyone who needs permission to simply stop and be. --- This episode was created with AI assistance. The sacred-pause theme was drawn from contemplative practice traditions, narrated in a still, gentle voice for morning meditation.DISCLAIMER

A guided sleep meditation for deep rest, spoken as the morning settles in, when the week has found its rhythm. Session 045 of Your Quiet Moment's nightly meditation series: The Art of Stillness. This is a long-form spoken meditation — a calm narrator guides you for roughly four hours while you fall asleep and stay asleep. You are welcome to listen from the beginning, or drift off and let the words continue without you. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome and settling into rest 03:00 — Guided body scan, releasing the day from head to toe 08:00 — Dream journeys: the garden of quiet hours, the library of soft pages, the house of quiet windows (gentle repeating cycles) 3:25:00 — Affirmations for deep, unhurried rest 3:30:00 — Closing whispers and the doorway of sleep There is nothing you need to do and nowhere you need to go. If you wake in the night, the meditation will still be here. Your Quiet Moment publishes guided spoken meditations for rest, stillness, and sleep. This episode was created with AI assistance. Tags: guided meditation, sleep meditation, deep rest, bedtime meditation, calm mind, stillness, your quiet moment, spoken meditation, fall asleep, night meditationDISCLAIMER

A guided sleep meditation for deep rest, spoken in these quiet early hours, when the day is unhurried. Session 064 of Your Quiet Moment's nightly meditation series: The Art of Stillness. This is a long-form spoken meditation — a calm narrator guides you for roughly four hours while you fall asleep and stay asleep. You are welcome to listen from the beginning, or drift off and let the words continue without you. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome and settling into rest 03:00 — Guided body scan, releasing the day from head to toe 08:00 — Dream journeys: the garden of quiet hours, the library of soft pages, the house of quiet windows (gentle repeating cycles) 3:25:00 — Affirmations for deep, unhurried rest 3:30:00 — Closing whispers and the doorway of sleep There is nothing you need to do and nowhere you need to go. If you wake in the night, the meditation will still be here. Your Quiet Moment publishes guided spoken meditations for rest, stillness, and sleep. This episode was created with AI assistance. Tags: guided meditation, sleep meditation, deep rest, bedtime meditation, calm mind, stillness, your quiet moment, spoken meditation, fall asleep, night meditationDISCLAIMER

What happens when the busyness of life drowns out the beauty right in front of you? Sometimes all the Lord is asking for is your "BRAVE YES". This season, Rhythms That Restore is exploring what it means to REMAIN with Jesus — not just on a Sunday morning, or at a  Silent Retreat, but in the middle of an ordinary, full, busy life. Some weeks it'll be just us. Other weeks, I'll pull up a chair with a friend who's helped shape my faith journey — on our next episode, you will hear from my friend who is a Spiritual Director & Retreat Host, Allison Bradsher. In this first episode of a new season, I'm sharing what happened when I finally said "yes" to three full days of silence at a 3 Night Silent Retreat — a tree planted right outside my window, an unexpected conversation at the dinner table, and a rest I couldn't have planned or earned. I'm learning that the rhythm of rest bears a fruit I've been searching for in so many other ways: freedom. If you're curious about Allison's next Silent Retreat — her next one starts Monday evening, November 2nd at 6:00pm through Thursday, November 5th at 10:00am — you can reach her directly for more info at allibrad@gmail.com. Pull up a chair, friend. I'm so glad to be back with you. If this episode touched your heart, if it resonated deep within you, or if you just have something you want to share — I'd love to hear from you. Find me on Instagram @cherissehixson01 or connect via email: Cherissehixson@hotmail.com Episode Highlights 00:03:59 — The word "nothing" surfaces during a moment of silence, and the funny, tender idea of inviting friends to "come do nothing" is born 00:05:36 — A six-year journey of learning to sit in silence, starting with a single 3-hour retreat back in 2021 00:08:21 — Arriving at the retreat to find a tree planted right outside her window — an echo of the Psalm 1 image she opened with 00:09:35 — A new friend at the dinner table shares how she found her own spiritual director through the Rhythms That Restore podcast — a moment that breaks something open 00:12:24 – 00:13:51 — Two full days of unplanned rest: sleeping, eating, watching birds and a storm roll in, with nothing to accomplish 00:16:50 — The question she's carrying into the new season: "Can 'remain' survive a season like this one?" 00:18:31 — A preview of next episode with Allison Bradsher — on questions as portals, not problems to solve

You do not need to earn your existence. You do not need to prove your worth through productivity, perfection, or people-pleasing. You are allowed to simply be. In this tender Stillness Journal session, host Maya Chen reminds you of the radical permission to exist without justification and guides you into a meditation on unconditional self-acceptance. [00:00] Welcome and soft landing [02:00] The lie that you must always be doing [04:30] How we confuse being with doing [07:00] The freedom of having nowhere to arrive [10:00] Guided meditation on simply being [13:00] Releasing the need to be impressive [16:00] Resting in who you already are [19:00] Closing affirmation and gentle return Maya shares the moment she realized she had been running a race with no finish line, constantly trying to justify her place in the world. Through gentle guidance, she helps you lay down the performance and rest in the simple truth of your own existence. You are enough, not because of what you do, but because of who you are. This meditation invites you to stop striving, even for just twenty minutes, and to experience the peace of simply being. No agenda, no goals, no expectations. Just you, breathing, alive, and enough. Part of the Stillness Journal series on Your Quiet Moment. Subscribe for more meditations that help you reconnect with yourself. This episode was produced with AI assistance for scripting and audio engineering. All personal reflections and guided practices are original to Maya Chen.DISCLAIMER

A guided sleep meditation for deep rest, spoken as the afternoon fades, when the week has found its rhythm. Session 027 of Your Quiet Moment's nightly meditation series: The Art of Stillness. This is a long-form spoken meditation — a calm narrator guides you for roughly four hours while you fall asleep and stay asleep. You are welcome to listen from the beginning, or drift off and let the words continue without you. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome and settling into rest 03:00 — Guided body scan, releasing the day from head to toe 08:00 — Dream journeys: the garden of quiet hours, the library of soft pages, the house of quiet windows (gentle repeating cycles) 3:25:00 — Affirmations for deep, unhurried rest 3:30:00 — Closing whispers and the doorway of sleep There is nothing you need to do and nowhere you need to go. If you wake in the night, the meditation will still be here. Your Quiet Moment publishes guided spoken meditations for rest, stillness, and sleep. This episode was created with AI assistance. Tags: guided meditation, sleep meditation, deep rest, bedtime meditation, calm mind, stillness, your quiet moment, spoken meditation, fall asleep, night meditationDISCLAIMER

Joel Peterson and Damian Barrett discuss all the latest footy news on AFL Daily. Fremantle looking to give Adelaide a night of headaches at Optus Stadium tonight. They'll be without Murphy Reid as they look to respond with a win. Steele Sidebottom announces his retirement, Dion Prestia is open to another opportunity and the Bulldogs have decided it's time to rest the Bont before the Wildcard weekend. Subscribe to AFL Daily wherever you get your podcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this guided meditation, we turn attention inward and come into intimate presence with the life that is here. Beginning with the body, breath and sensations, we gradually open into the spacious awareness that holds all experience. As we soften habitual tension and allow thoughts, emotions and sensations to arise and pass, we discover the tender wakefulness that is always here. Like waves held by the ocean, our changing experiences belong to awareness but do not define who we are. As we close, we are invited to rest in that open, loving presence—and to remember that beneath the changing forms of our lives, awake awareness is our true home. This meditation is especially supportive for: ✨ Relaxing physical and emotional tension ✨ Cultivating embodied mindfulness and presence ✨ Meeting difficult emotions with tenderness ✨ Resting in open awareness ✨ Remembering our shared belonging and essential nature   Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music

A gentle five minutes for the soul that has carried too much without setting it down.If the day has been long, if your shoulders have been holding more than you realized, this whisper is for you. Ava walks you through a slow, kind permission to land in the present moment and offers a quiet reframe of rest. Rest is not the opposite of purpose. It is the soil in which purpose quietly takes root.You will not be scolded here. There is nothing to fix, and nothing to finish, and no posture you have to perfect before you can be allowed to rest. The body you live in has been carrying you through every hour, through every breath you did not know you were holding, and it is invited now to ask for a softer landing.Settle in. Soften down. Come home.Chapters0:00 — The Quiet Hour Arrives1:30 — Permission to Settle3:00 — Rest as a Practice4:00 — Settle, Soften, Come HomeThis short reflection is part of Whisper Minutes, a daily five-minute series for Your Quiet Moment — gentle pauses to begin, return, and rest. Each episode is a small, soft place to land whenever stillness feels hard to find.Crafted with care and shared with the help of AI tools to support the writing and production of this reflection.DISCLAIMER

A guided sleep meditation for deep rest, spoken in the deep of night, when the week has found its rhythm. Session 010 of Your Quiet Moment's nightly meditation series: The Art of Stillness. This is a long-form spoken meditation — a calm narrator guides you for roughly four hours while you fall asleep and stay asleep. You are welcome to listen from the beginning, or drift off and let the words continue without you. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome and settling into rest 03:00 — Guided body scan, releasing the day from head to toe 08:00 — Dream journeys: the garden of quiet hours, the library of soft pages, the house of quiet windows (gentle repeating cycles) 3:25:00 — Affirmations for deep, unhurried rest 3:30:00 — Closing whispers and the doorway of sleep There is nothing you need to do and nowhere you need to go. If you wake in the night, the meditation will still be here. Your Quiet Moment publishes guided spoken meditations for rest, stillness, and sleep. This episode was created with AI assistance. Tags: guided meditation, sleep meditation, deep rest, bedtime meditation, calm mind, stillness, your quiet moment, spoken meditation, fall asleep, night meditationDISCLAIMER

Rest and Restore — A Quiet Place to Begin AgainSettle in. Let the world fall away. This sixty-minute guided rest is a soft place to land for anyone whose body has been carrying more than it was ever asked to. The hour is yours, with no agenda, no striving, and no list of things to be. There is only breath, and the slow unwinding of a long day, and the calm voice of Clara Berg walking you home to yourself.Clara Berg guides you through a gentle body scan, a long-exhale breath practice, and a quiet meditation on the place inside you that has always known how to rest. You are reminded, more than once, that rest is not a reward. Rest is a birthright. You are allowed to set down every weight you have been carrying, and you are allowed to be held.This episode is part of the Rest and Restore series on Your Quiet Moment, a daily companion of gentle sixty-minute meditations for sleep, renewal, and the slow art of returning to yourself one breath at a time.Chapters:00:00 — Welcome and Settling In04:00 — Body Scan Begins12:00 — Deepening the Breath23:00 — The Quiet Place33:00 — Long Exhale and Release44:00 — Resting in the Stillness55:00 — Gratitude and Return63:00 — Coming HomePerfect for sleep, evening wind-down, deep rest after a long day, recovery from burnout, midday reset, and restorative practice for tired bodies and tired minds. Press play, lower the lights, and let the hour carry you.This Rest and Restore session was prepared with care for gentle pacing, slow speech, and the felt sense of being held. The words were crafted to soften the body and quiet the mind, then voiced in a hushed, intimate register designed to accompany you into deep rest. The episode is offered as a small gift of stillness in a noisy world.This Rest and Restore session was prepared as part of the Your Quiet Moment daily series, with original words and a quiet voice chosen specifically for slow evening listening.DISCLAIMER

Practical help can make our days run more smoothly, but it cannot do the work that only Christ can do in us. This episode is a reminder that Jesus is enough—not only for our salvation, but for every part of daily life. His grace is sufficient, and we can depend on Him in whatever He has placed before us today. Head over to ThankfulHomemaker.com for full show notes on all the links and resources mentioned in today's episode.  Homemaking Matters: Living for God's Glory in the Ordinary The Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent RELATED EPISODES: EP 79: Homemaking Matters: A Good God Working Out His Purposes in the Midst of Our Ordinary Days Look Well to the Ways of Your Household RESOURCES: Join Thankful Homemaker for access to the Free Library of Resources Follow ThankfulHomemaker on Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest & Instagram Join the Thankful Homemaker Facebook Group Subscribe to the Podcast on Your Favorite App  Online Courses & Printables Thankful Homemaker Merchandise Buy Marci a Cup of Coffee xo   

In this episode, I sit down again with infant and toddler sleep specialist Brittni from Resting in Motherhood to unpack the biggest myths around baby and toddler sleep and how to support healthy sleep without sleep training. We also dive into co-sleeping, transitioning to independent sleep, nervous system regulation, and even homeschooling, giving you practical, science-backed strategies that will leave you feeling more grounded and confident in your choices as a parent.Brittni Mella Cepeda is a sleep and motherhood mentor specializing in biologically normal infant and toddler sleep. She supports attachment-focused families in improving sleep without sleep training by taking a holistic, individualized approach that considers temperament, development, family dynamics, sensory needs, & so much more.With experience supporting over 600 families 1:1 and thousands through her programs, Brittni helps mothers move from overwhelm and exhaustion to clarity, confidence, and sustainable rest.Brittni's Instagram: @resting_in_motherhoodBrittni's website: restinginmotherhood.comBrittni's course: Better Sleep in Two WeeksWays to work with Corinne: Join the Mind Your Hormones Method, HERE! (Use code PODCAST for 10% off!!)Resources & Links MentionedPrevious episode with Brittni (Part 1)Bedtime Explorers podcast Goldminds appYoto Player & TonieboxThe Good and the Beautiful homeschool curriculumInstagram: Let Them Be Little (homeschool inspiration)Join the Mind Your Hormones Community to connect more with me & other members of this community!Come hang out with me on Instagram: @corinneangealicaOr on TikTok: @corinneangelicaEmail Fam: Click here to get weekly emails from meMind Your Hormones Instagram: @mindyourhormones.podcast Disclaimer: always consult your doctor before taking any supplementation. This podcast is intended for educational purposes only, not to diagnose or treat any conditions. 

""A five-minute companion for the racing mind at the end of a long day, hosted by Ava Chen as part of the Whisper Minutes series on Your Quiet Moment. If your thoughts are spinning and your chest holding too many questions at once, this short practice is a soft place to set the worry down. There is nothing to figure out here. Nothing to solve. Just breath, gentleness, and a steady voice reminding you that you are allowed to not know right now. In this practice, you are invited to notice the quiet work you have been doing to stay ahead of things, honor the gentle courage of holding the worry so no one else had to, and place a hand on your chest to meet the faithful rhythm that has been with you through every wondering. The practice widens into a slow meditation on letting the shoulders drop, leaving tomorrow's question for tomorrow, and trusting the answer will arrive in its own way. This meditation is part of the Whisper Minutes series on Your Quiet Moment, where each episode offers a short, voice-only companion for the moments in your day when you need a softer place to be. Chapters: 00:09 Welcome, Quiet Worrier 00:46 Honoring the Holding 01:24 Notice the Quiet Work 02:19 The Faithful Beat 03:18 Rest Here, Gently 04:08 You Are Off Duty Take this with you. You have worried enough. You have planned enough. Resting as you are, you are still so very loved. Rest now, dear mind. Tomorrow, when you are ready, we will begin again, gently, together, one quiet breath at a time. This episode was created with AI assistance as part of the Whisper Minutes devotional practice series on Your Quiet Moment. The voice you hear is synthesized, but the words were written with care, and held to the same simple standard as every other episode: be a soft place to land when you need one.DISCLAIMER

For more information, please visit amarillofellowship.com.

The Secret to Resting in God's Shadow : Profession of Faith | Knowing Your Words Have Power!

(Tisarana Buddhist Monastery) Staying with the theme of "Humility", and I making/My making, "Ahankara/Mimankara", Ajahn Viradhammo urges us to train to notice when this I making and my making is occurring, and to use the "mood of the mind", as a guide to knowing this. When we notice that the mood of the mind, is an object, not the subject, the foreground, not the background awareness, we can then rest in the background, and see things "as they are". Resting in awareness, letting the moods pass, and not making a self of the mood.

Topics: Understanding Spirit, Soul, and Body, The Biblical Reality of the Trinity, God's Plural Nature in Creation (Genesis 1:26), Made New in Spirit (Romans 6:6), Eternal Security in Christ (Ephesians 1:13), Truth About Blasphemy Against the Spirit (Matthew 12:31), Saved by Grace Through Faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), Indwelt by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), Defining the Flesh vs Sinful Nature, Your Flesh as Holy and Acceptable, Understanding Sin as a Force (Genesis 4:7), Dead to the Power of Sin (Romans 6:11), Identity as Saints Not Sinners, Using Your Body as a Tool for Righteousness, Sealed Perfection Despite Sins, Why Christians Cannot Live in Sin (Romans 6:1-2), Illustrating Spiritual DNA in Believers, Defining the Human Soul and Consciousness, How the Mind Will and Emotions Express You, Resting in Your Complete Identity in Christ, The Believer's Complete Reconciliation with God (2 Corinthians 5:18-21), Overcoming Enemy Lies with Truth, The Purpose of Human Flesh on Earth, The Unchanging Identtiy of a Reborn Believer, Christ Defeated Sin's Power at the Cross, Freedom From Condemnation and Accusation, Distinguishing Your Flesh From Spiritual Influences, God's Indwelling Presence in Believers, Walking according to the Spirit (Romans 8:1-13)Support the showSign up for Matt's free daily devotional!  https://mattmcmillen.com/newsletter

Jesus offers one of the most countercultural invitations in all of scripture: come to Me, take My yoke, and I will give you rest. But what does that actually mean, and what does it look like on a Tuesday? This week we dig into Matthew 11:28-30 and discover that Jesus is not just offering a feeling of peace, but a whole reorientation of daily life, inviting us to let Him serve as our rabbi, setting the pace and the priorities. We explore three things we see Jesus model: celebrating identity over productivity, drawing on the strength of the Spirit rather than His own, and keeping His eyes fixed on the cross with fierce, unrelenting focus. But perhaps the most important thing to understand about the yoke is this: Jesus does not stand apart from the burden and hand it to us. He attaches Himself to us, climbs in alongside us, and promises to carry the weight. You are yolked to someone gentle and lowly, and that changes everything.

Evening Drift Into Still Waters — A Quiet Moment Meditation for Releasing the Day and Resting in PeaceThis gentle evening meditation guides you through a journey of deep relaxation, gratitude, and inner peace as the day fades into night. Allow yourself to be held by the stillness as we visit tranquil meadows, walk through quiet forests, float on moonlit waters, and rest by a warm fire.Chapter Timestamps:00:00 — Arrival: Settling Into the Evening05:00 — Body Dissolution: Releasing Tension From Head to Toe25:00 — Guided Journey: The Meadow, The Stream, The Forest, The Cottage, The Ocean45:00 — Core Affirmations: Quiet Truths for the Weary Heart75:00 — Stillness: Deep Rest and Inner Peace105:00 — Additional Journey: The Mountain, The Lake, The Garden135:00 — Closing Affirmations and Gratitude160:00 — The River Garden and Night Sky190:00 — The Quiet Library and Cottage Under Stars215:00 — Final Meadow of Gratitude235:00 — Soft Landing and RestPerfect for unwinding after a long day, releasing worry, cultivating gratitude, and preparing your body and mind for deep restful sleep. Let the soft whispered words carry you into a state of complete peace and relaxation.Your Quiet Moment — Because you deserve to rest deeply and be held in stillness.#meditation #eveningmeditation #guidedmeditation #relaxation #gratitude #selfcare #sleep #stressrelief #peace #calm #quietmoment #meditationforsleep #eveningroutine #mindfulness #restDISCLAIMER

*Listen to the Show notes and podcast transcript with this multi-language player. Summary This conversation centers on trusting the impartation of the Holy Spirit into our spirit. The Family emphasizes that God often works beyond the understanding of the natural mind. Instead of trying to figure everything out, believers are encouraged to open their hearts, receive from the Spirit, and rest in the Father's love. The discussion points out that what God imparts may not always be what a person thinks they need or wants to receive. Yet because He is the Father and He loves us, we can trust that what He places within us is good, eternal, and part of what He is creating us to become. As we rest in Him, the Word that has been imparted into our spirits begins to come alive, flow through us, and be spoken by the Spirit. Show Notes The Spirit bypasses the carnal mind The impartation of the Holy Spirit does not begin in human reasoning or understanding. God places something directly into the spirit, and over time it filters into the soul, mind, revelation, and walk. Rest comes through trusting the Father The Family emphasizes that rest comes when we trust the Holy Spirit and believe that the Father loves us. We do not have to understand everything He is doing in order to receive what He is imparting. The Word becomes a reservoir within us There is a living deposit of the Word in our spirits. As we rest and trust, that Word comes alive and begins to flow out of us by the Spirit. Impartation is spirit to spirit The conversation highlights that impartation does not always require many words. A person can become a channel through which the Spirit flows to others. God creates what He wants us to be The Father may impart something different than what we expected, but it is still good and eternal. He is forming us according to His purpose. Stay focused on today Rather than worrying about yesterday or tomorrow, the encouragement is to walk in what the Spirit is leading today. Quotes “All we really need to do is align ourself with His Spirit and allow Him to work in us.” “God imparted to your spirit, and then you became it in your spirit first.” “There has to be a trust, a revelation that He loves you, and that He started something. He's not gonna stop until He's finished with it.” “There is a reservoir of the Word that's been imparted to our spirits that's very real.” “We just need to be a channel, spirit to flow through.” “Not by power nor by might, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” “You're my Father, and You love me, and You're going to impart good things to me.” “You open your heart, you receive it. That's it. It's not any harder than that.” “We just need to trust that what He's placed within each and every one of us has prepared us for this day.” Scriptural References Trusting the Spirit's work Zechariah 4 (6) — “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit” directly supports the theme that God's work comes by the Spirit, not by human effort. Resting in the Lord Matthew 11 (28–30) — Jesus calls His people to come to Him and find rest, which connects with the conversation's emphasis on resting instead of striving. The Spirit teaching and revealing John 16 (13) — The Spirit of truth guides believers into truth, showing that revelation comes from the Spirit rather than the natural mind. The carnal mind cannot receive spiritual things Romans 8 (6–7) — The carnal mind is set against God, which fits Ron's point about God bypassing the natural mind and imparting directly to the spirit. God completing what He began Philippians 1 (6) — God begins the work and continues it until it is complete, matching Ken's statement that the Father started something and will not stop until He finishes it. The Word living within us Colossians 3 (16) — The Word of Christ dwelling richly within us connects with the idea of a reservoir of the Word imparted into our spirits. The day star arising in the heart 2 Peter 1 (19) — This speaks of the day star arising in the heart, matching Ken's statement about the day star beginning to arise as impartation is received. Living one day at a time Matthew 6 (34) — Jesus teaches not to worry about tomorrow, which supports Mike's point about staying focused on today. Takeaway The Father is imparting His Spirit and His Word into us, even when we do not fully understand what He is doing. Our part is to open our hearts, trust His love, rest in His work, and allow what He has placed within our spirit to come alive and flow through us.

Everybody's busy. Nobody's resting. And the advice to "find more balance" or "create more margin" isn't actually helping.Jason and Jadan get into why balance is an illusion, why margin is a trap we define for ourselves, and why rhythm is the word the Bible actually points to. They also get honest about why church is often the first thing people cut when life gets full — and what that's actually costing them.The goal of rest isn't to recover from work. It's to fuel it.Questions or feedback? Email us at podcast@zionclearlake.orgLike us on socials!Facebook • @pockettheology.zclInstagram • @pockettheology.zclTikTok • @pockettheology.zclYouTube • youtube.com/@pockettheologyzclTOP 5 TOPICS / KEYWORDSChristian rest and burnoutbiblical rhythm and Sabbathwhy balance is a mythhow to rest as a Christianbusyness and faith

Evening Softness — A Quiet Moment Meditation for Receiving the Day with GentlenessWelcome to Your Quiet Moment. This evening meditation is designed to help you release the weight of the day and settle into deep, restful peace.Chapters:00:00 — Arrival: Setting the Scene for Evening Rest05:00 — Body Dissolution: Releasing Tension from Head to Toe25:00 — Guided Journey: The Evening Garden and Moonlit Path85:00 — Core Affirmations: Reminders of Worth, Safety, and Love145:00 — Stillness: The Room of Soft Light and Inner Peace205:00 — Soft Landing: Evening Blessings and FarewellThis meditation invites you to release every expectation, every worry, and every demand you have placed on yourself today. You are enough. You are worthy. You are held.Let the gentle voice guide you through a body scan that dissolves tension, a moonlit garden journey that restores wonder, and deep affirmations that remind you of your inherent worth.Whether you listen before sleep or as a calming wind-down ritual, this episode is your permission slip to simply be.Subscribe for daily evening meditations from Your Quiet Moment.#meditation #selfaffirmations #eveningmeditation #relaxation #sleep #peace #gratitude #yourquietmomentDISCLAIMER

In this episode, we continue our book study on Friendship in the Lord and discuss how friendship with others leads us into deeper intimacy with God. We talk about our longing for both human and divine communion, how healthy friendships free us from self-preoccupation, and why learning to receive feedback is essential to our growth. We also reflect on how unmet desires in friendship are signs of our longing for the Trinity and the importance of releasing lesser goods so that we can be free to receive God's greater gifts.    Announcement: You can buy your copy of Friendship in the Lord from Ave Maria Press (or Amazon).   Journal Questions: What makes me feel at home with the Trinity? How has God invited me to be a more faithful friend? Where do I need to grow in self-awareness and be freed from self-preoccupation? What is my disposition when someone lovingly reveals my own weaknesses and shortcomings to me? How have I refused to grow?   Discussion Questions: What makes you feel at home with other people? How is God inviting you into deeper communion with others? How has the Lord revealed to you your weaknesses and shortcomings? How did you receive that truth from Him? How have you given into sloth by seeking God's lesser gifts and ignoring His greater gifts?   Quote to Ponder: "In a special way, Christian friendship is meant to help us grow in our relationship with the Lord, as one intimately loved by him. It is meant to give us some small experience of what it means to be at home in communion with the Holy Trinity. Only in intimacy with the Lord are we the deepest "who we are." Only in communion with him are we our truest selves." (Friendship in the Lord, Page 77)   Scripture for Lectio: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." (John 15:15)   Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:00 Scripture Verse 02:37 Human Friendship Helps Us Grow In Relationship with God 05:06 Freedom from Self-Preoccupation 07:47 Cultivating Self Awareness 10:15 Giving and Receiving Honest Feedback 14:36 Pain in Friendship is a Symbol of Our Longing for God 19:12 What Should We Do with Our Ache? 22:48 Resting in the Enjoyment of Lesser Gifts 25:05 A Call to Make Room 27:22 Closing Prayer

Evening Tide of Gentle Letting Go — A Quiet Moment Meditation for Resting in the Soft Close of Day00:00 Opening — Setting the Scene for Evening Rest05:00 Body Dissolution — Releasing Tension from Head to Toe20:00 The Evening Shore — A Gentle Walk Along Still Waters35:00 The Garden of Letting Go — Evening Flowers and Stone Benches50:00 The River of Release — Placing Worries in the Current65:00 The Lantern Room — Your Inner Flame That Never Goes Out80:00 Core Affirmations — Worth, Joy, Connection, Presence, Trust100:00 The Forest Path — Walking Through Quiet Strength115:00 The Birch Grove — Belonging and Community130:00 The Window of Gratitude — Remembering the Gifts of Today145:00 The Evening Meadow — Fireflies and the Vast Night Sky160:00 The Night Sky — Starlight Patience and Inner Light175:00 Stillness and Breath Count — Anchoring in This Moment190:00 The Ocean of Rest — Floating in Warm, Gentle Water205:00 Soft Landing — Returning to Your Body with Peace220:00 Final Affirmations — Integration of Worth, Joy, and Wonder235:00 The Benediction — A Gentle Closing Blessing250:00 The Last Breath — Complete Surrender into SleepThis evening meditation guides you through a series of gentle visualizations designed to help you release the weight of the day and find deep, restful peace. From a quiet shore to a lantern-lit room, from a birch grove to an ocean of calm, each scene invites you to let go of effort and embrace the soft close of evening.Perfect for unwinding after a long day, releasing stress and worry, cultivating gratitude for the small moments, preparing for deep and restorative sleep, and finding peace in the quiet hours before rest.Your Quiet Moment is your nightly companion for gentle meditation, self-affirmation, and peaceful reflection. New episodes daily.DISCLAIMER

When we pause and gently return to the living experience of this moment, we begin to discover a refuge that has always been here. This guided meditation invites you to relax the body, soften the heart, and awaken to the vibrant aliveness that is present beneath the constant stream of thinking. Together we'll practice using the breath and the body as a home base—learning to meet whatever arises with kindness, openness, and an accepting "yes." As we become more intimate with our present-moment experience, we begin to realize that true peace isn't found by changing this moment, but by fully inhabiting it. Whether you're new to meditation or a longtime practitioner, this practice offers a gentle pathway to greater presence, inner ease, and a deeper sense of belonging to life. In this meditation you'll explore: • Relaxing deeply into the body and breath • Using the body as an anchor for mindful awareness • Meeting thoughts and emotions with compassion instead of resistance • Returning again and again to the aliveness of the present moment • Resting in the spacious awareness that is always here   Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music

Building a New Version of Normal       What happens when the life you want to return to no longer works the way you remember it? After amputation, we are often told that we can get back to doing the things we love, and I believe that is true. But I have learned that those activities may look, feel, and function differently than they did before. Recovery is not always about returning to the person we used to be. Sometimes, it is about reimagining what life can look like now. Losing a limb changes more than our appearance. It changes our balance, center of gravity, movement patterns, energy levels, and the way we approach everyday activities. Even something described as being “as easy as riding a bike” can become complicated. Getting onto the bike, positioning a prosthetic foot, balancing, starting, stopping, and reacting quickly all require new strategies. The same is true for adaptive fitness, hiking, running, skiing, traveling, and even standing for long periods. Our bodies operate under different physics after limb loss, and we often use more energy to complete the same activity. I think of energy as currency. Every activity makes a withdrawal, so I have to be intentional about how I spend it. If I know I have plans with family or friends, I may need to skip the gym, shorten another activity, or rest beforehand so I have enough energy to be present. I also have to protect both my residual limb and my sound limb. Socket fit, skin irritation, phantom pain, neuromas, fatigue, and compensation can change how I move from one day to the next. There are days when pushing forward is appropriate, and there are days when pulling back is the wisest choice I can make. Wisdom is not weakness. Resting, using a mobility aid, shortening a workout, or changing a goal does not mean I am failing. It means I am protecting my body for the next twenty, thirty, or forty years. I have learned to ask myself, “Is it worth it?” Is the activity worth the pain, skin damage, lack of sleep, or extended recovery that may follow? Success after amputation must also be personal. I cannot measure myself against who I was before surgery, another amputee on social media, or a Paralympic athlete with years of specialized training. My success may mean hiking a shorter trail, trusting a running blade, completing half a day of skiing, or simply showing up and moving my body. Reimagining life after amputation means experimenting, adapting, learning from setbacks, and creating new goals. Progress is rarely linear, but every step still matters. My life did not end with amputation. A new chapter began, and I get to decide what comes next.     Your Warrior Challenge Think about something you have been trying to return to. Are you measuring your progress against your old life, or are you giving yourself permission to approach it differently? Choose one goal this week and reimagine it. Adjust the pace, change the method, ask for support, and create a version that works for the body you have today. Stop chasing your old normal. Start building a life that supports who you are becoming. Keep moving forward, dear Warrior! One step at a time! And as always, Be Healthy, Be Happy, Be YOU!!!   Much love,  

Steve Crawford • Psalm 127:1–127:5 • Sermon Notes (Video)

Do you ever sit down to rest... only to feel like you should be doing something else?In this Moment, Zoe is joined by psychologist and author Dr Nicola Jane Hobbs to explore why so many mothers struggle to slow down. The answer isn't that you're lazy, bad at resting or doing motherhood wrong. It's that your nervous system has learnt that being busy feels safe.Together they explore why matrescence can feel like such a shock to our system, how years of rushing make stillness feel unfamiliar, and why learning to weave tiny moments of slowness into your day can help your nervous system feel calmer, safer and more regulated.Nicola also shares a beautiful redefinition of rest: it's not just lying down or getting more sleep. Rest is anything that helps your nervous system switch off its stress response.If you've ever struggled with mum guilt or burnout, or found it impossible to truly relax, this conversation will completely change the way you think about rest.

When life feels overwhelming, our first instinct is often to tighten, resist, or try to control what is unfolding. Yet true freedom begins when we discover the courage to soften and allow this moment to be just as it is. Inspired by the timeless teachings of mindfulness, this guided meditation offers a gentle pathway into presence through the practice of letting go—not by pushing experience away, but by releasing the resistance that keeps the heart contracted. Together, we'll explore: - Letting go of repetitive thoughts and returning to presence - Releasing physical tension and softening the body - Opening beyond emotional armoring into an undefended heart - Resting in the spacious awareness that holds all experience - Discovering the peace that naturally arises when we stop resisting life   As Ajahn Chah reminds us, "If you let go a little, you'll have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace." This meditation is an invitation to experience that peace for yourself. Whether you're seeking stress relief, emotional healing, deeper mindfulness, or a way to reconnect with your natural presence, may this practice help you come home to the awareness and love that are always here.   Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music  

One of the great gifts of mindfulness is discovering that we can always begin again. In this guided meditation, I invite you to return to the aliveness of the present moment through the breath, the body, and the simple recognition: "Know that you're here." Together we'll gently relax the body, awaken embodied awareness, and practice returning whenever the mind wanders. Rather than judging ourselves for drifting into thought, we discover that each moment of noticing is another opportunity to come home to presence. As awareness opens, we begin to sense the spaciousness that holds every sound, sensation, and breath—revealing the natural peace and wakefulness that are always available. Whether you're beginning a meditation practice or deepening an existing one, this meditation offers a nourishing refuge—a way of returning, again and again, to the living presence that is your true home. In this meditation you'll explore: Relaxing deeply through breath and body awareness Returning to the present with a gentle anchor Working skillfully with a busy mind Resting in open, spacious awareness Offering compassion and blessings from embodied presence Discovering the freedom of simply being here   ******************** Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music Support Tara's Work: If you find value in these talks and wish to support their continuation, please consider making a donation. Your generosity helps us keep these teachings available to all. Visit: https://www.tarabrach.com/donation/ Stay connected to Tara:  ▪️Website: tarabrach.com ▪️YouTube: /@tarabrach ▪️Facebook: /tarabrach  ▪️Instagram: @tarabrach ▪️Threads: @tarabrach